


now we are one in everlasting peace

by hakyeonni



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Death, Fallen Angels, Inspired by Romeo and Juliet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23378512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakyeonni/pseuds/hakyeonni
Summary: the angel falls and as he falls he burns, skin torn away, wings stripped of feather, flesh turned to bone until he is nothing but a skeleton hurtling from the heavens.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	now we are one in everlasting peace

_My fall will be for you_  
_My love will be in you_  
_If you be the one to cut me_  
_I will bleed forever  
  
_

The angel falls and as he falls he burns, skin torn away, wings stripped of feather, flesh turned to bone until he is nothing but a skeleton hurtling from the heavens. With no flesh he cannot scream; with no wings he cannot fly, although he does his best, wing bones pathetically beating against the roaring wind.

It does not hurt. That is the strangest thing. They’re told it hurts, but he feels no pain. He feels nothing except a crushing sensation around his ribs, the heavy blow of disappointment, of failure.

He plunges towards the earth, devoid of himself and soul torn asunder. A river swallows him whole.

 _Cruel irony_ , he thinks, and then the pain begins.

***

_He has never seen any mortal as beautiful as the one in front of him. Water sluices down his back and runs down his hands, catching the light in ways the angel has never seen before—it’s somehow heartbreaking, this beauty, and he looks away. This is not the reason he was sent here. This man is not his purpose._

_But as he goes to walk away, the human turns._

_Their eyes meet. The human holds immortal gaze steadily. His eyes widen, but only slightly. He freezes. The angel can see his hair stand on end._

_“What are you?” the man breathes._

_The angel does not answer. He cannot; they are forbidden and because it is forbidden it is impossible. Even if he wanted to force out words in that strange mortal tongue, he simply cannot. For a moment he considers his options before deciding the simplest thing to do is to turn and walk away. As he does, though, he can’t help but see the look of wonder and awe on the human’s face at the sight of his wings—huge, ebony black, shining with the light of the stars themselves._

***

Water is meant to cleanse. To wash free one’s sins. That is why the mortals are baptised in it, after all; there is so much symbolism attached to the very image of it that is hard not to think of water as a positive force, a benevolent one.

This water is malevolent.

It pulls his bones apart, washes them away, and he screams silently all the while. His being is dragged along the bottom of the river, stones scraping into him, drowning him. He is being torn, ripped, oh, it hurts, it hurts, to love is a sin he knows but surely no sin deserves this—

***

 _The next time they meet the angel plans it._ Innocent _, he thinks._ To observe _. But the man’s eyes—that look of wonderment—have stayed in his head no matter what he has attempted to do to shake them, and so the next time he lands on Earth it is right next to that very same river._

_And just like last time, there he is._

_The angel drinks him in as he bathes himself, pouring water over his head, shaking his hair to send droplets spilling across the pale dawn air. He is unselfconscious in his nakedness, almost seems to be revelling in it, and it only just now occurs to the angel that what he’s doing is wrong._

_He steps on a stick deliberately. It cracks underfoot and the human’s head whips around, and the look on his face—_ oh, _thinks the angel,_ he has planned this too _._

_“You,” he says, and before the angel can move the mortal scrambles up the bank of the river until they are face to face._

_This is the closest he has ever been to a mortal—forbidden, it is forbidden—and yet he is not afraid. His heart is racing with something, but it’s not fear. Anticipation?_

_“Who are you?” the man demands, his voice loud, too loud._

Saniel, Seraphim in the Third Rank and Eye of God _, the angel thinks._ You can call me Sani. _But mortals—alas—are not mind readers, and the human just screws up his face in frustration._

_“Who… are… you?” he repeats, slowly, deliberately, loudly. “Can you… speak?”_

_This, at least, he can answer. The angel shakes his head no._

_The human’s brow furrows as he processes, and there’s a word for that - charming - but the angel banishes it from his head as soon as he thinks it. He is in enough trouble already._

_“You… can’t speak? Or you don’t know how?”_

_One finger held aloft. First question._

_The human nods, but his puzzled expression does not go away. “You were watching me.”_

_A statement. A nod._

_“Why?”_

_Even if he could speak, he cannot answer, for he does not know._

***

Hours pass, or perhaps days. He has no way of judging and time is a concept that no longer matters to him. Memories of green eyes flash through his mind, elusive and fleeting, and when he reaches for them they slip through his fingers.

The river carries him along, bones tumbling and winding and plunging, and he finds himself in a stagnant pool downstream from a waterfall. It is here that his flesh begins to knit itself back together, and it is here that he can scream, properly and finally.

The pain is otherworldly. He thought he knew pain; he has fought in countless battles, been cut thousands of times, lost limbs, lost eyes, never wings but still—this is unimaginable.

He is not sure he can survive, even though he knows he must, he must.

***

_They begin meeting semi-regularly, as often as the angel can escape from the watchful eyes of others. It is always at the river and the man is always naked—not obscene, as he first thought, but somehow beautiful. They sit in silence, mostly, but sometimes the human talks. His name is Ezra, he is thirty-two, and he is the blacksmith in his village. He does not speak of his family, and the angel does not pry._

_“Your wings,” the man says one day, as they sit companionably with their legs in the cool river water. “I… They’re - I want to - may I… touch them?”_

_The angel stiffens before he can help it. To touch an angel’s wings is intimacy on the highest level. It is not a casual gesture. It is not for mortals. He shakes his head violently, the wrongness of it settling in his throat and coating his tongue with bitterness, although he is not sure why._

_“Sorry,” the human mumbles, looking down at the water._

_The angel looks at his profile and sighs._

***

Eyes return first so he can see, which is a blessing, but when he looks down he wishes he was blind once more. He is no longer an angel, nor mortal; he is something in between, rotting flesh clinging to ancient bones, he can see his heart beating through his ribs and he shudders and looks at the sky—

The sun. His old friend. He used to soar so close the others would tease him his feathers would get singed. Now—now he does not have to see to know that his wings are gone, reduced to bone.

Nothingness. He is nothing. He has nothing.

***

_The touching begins slowly. Innocently, even. A brush of hands here. A foot sliding against an ankle there. A hand on the back. And then one day they are holding hands, fingers entwined, the water washing them over them both as they lay floating on their backs._

_“I wish I knew your name,” the human whispers, just loud enough to be heard over the birdsong._

_The angel disentangles himself from the human’s grasp and wades to the bank of the river. The sand beneath his toes is an inviting surface, and before he can think twice, he kneels and writes his name in the sand with his finger, large and swooping._

_“Saniel,” the human murmurs from behind him, and it is as if he has been struck with electricity—every synapse in his body fires at once, his wings spread and flutter, and he shivers with an emotion so heavy he does not have a word for it. Names are power, and the sound of his name in this human’s mouth is almost… luscious._

_He underlines the first four letters of his name with his finger and stands up._

_“Sani?” the human reads, and once again that feeling spreads down his spine._

_He nods, and the human smiles._

***

He drowns countless times over as his body reforms itself. It takes years, he thinks—decades, centuries, millennia he lies there under the water, dreaming of his love’s eyes and screaming soundlessly.

 _I will endure_ , he thinks, _for him_ , for the only thing that has ever mattered beyond Heavenly concerns, the only thing worth falling for, worth dying for. For him.

The water fills him up, cold and cruel, and he breathes it in over and over again.

***

_This time it’s night when they meet by the river. He cannot remember whose idea it was, and in the end it doesn’t matter anyway—the human is as magnificent by moonlight as he is by sunlight, perhaps even more so, and the angel cannot tear his eyes away._

_They dance. The water is up to their thighs and bracingly cold, their skin pebbled and pale, but it’s forgettable. Heartbreaking—his beauty is heartbreaking, enveloped in the silver light, and it is if nothing else in the universe matters but them. The human’s hands are warm, resting on the small of the angel’s back, and they sway peacefully and mindlessly to the sounds of nature around them until all of a sudden there’s a hand on his wing._

_If he could shriek he would, but the sound, like all others, gets caught in his throat. The wrongness of it is overwhelming, bitter and hard on his tongue, waves of nausea rushing over him. He needs to pull away, he must, everything in him is howling at him to pull away, but—_

_Green eyes, human eyes, holding his gaze steadily. Questioning. Trusting. Loving?_

_That’s all it takes. Something inside him fractures, and instead of wrenching himself free and ending it properly, he leans into the touch and wraps his hands around the human’s waist, nails digging into soft flesh._

_More intimate than any kiss, more sinful than any pleasure of the flesh, is the feeling of the human’s hands on his wings. He traces the arch of them, down to where they meet the skin, and then skims along the top to run his fingers down the longest, stiffest flight feathers. It is ecstasy, awful, horrible ecstasy, but neither of them can stop._

***

The last things to form are his legs, and it’s days before he can haul himself to his feet, albeit unsteadily. He runs a hand over himself. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two arms, two hands, torso, two legs, two feet, two wings—

Two wings.

Two wings?

But he thought—

He wraps them around himself and cannot help the sob of abject horror that rips itself from his throat. They are not the magnificent, strong things they once were. They don’t shine with the light of the stars anymore. Instead they’re tattered, ripped, rotting. The feathers that are left are a dull, dirty grey.

He runs his shaking fingers over them and wails over the loss of his birthright.

***

_They lay down on the bank, touches tentative at first but soon becoming more confident. The first kiss is awkward and shy and they bump their teeth and smile. It’s so human—so forbidden—that the angel nearly stops himself, but all thoughts of ceasing fly out of his head when the human’s hand finds his wings again._

Mine _, he thinks, unerringly, unfalteringly,_ mine _. The one thing he is forbidden to think, to want: to covet is to sin and to sin is to fall. But he does not covet, he possesses, and this is how he dismisses his faults and instead moves in the human, making him cry out in pleasure over and over again._

Mine _._

***

Dawn finds him crouching on the bank, still running his fingers obsessively over his wings; there’s a handful of feathers scattered at his feet now. The oddly familiar sound of birds catches his attention and reluctantly he begins to survey his surroundings. A river, dirty and churning. A waterfall to his right. A clearing a ways off to his left. It’s nondescript, could be anywhere, and the frustration rises in his throat until he spies—there, by the bank, little purple flowers.

He… knows those flowers.

He looks at the water at his feet. Stares, unrecognising. Familiarity swims at the corners of his consciousness, slowly, slowly, until he looks up and realises where he is.

He turns and starts to run.

***

_They stay there all night, unable to keep their hands off each other. When the sun rises in the morning, painting them both in pale pinks and oranges, the human leans over and whispers words into the angel’s chest, a brand of the sweetest kind:_

_“I love you.”_

_He aches, for he cannot reply. Instead he just holds the human close and prays that his touches can transmit the words somehow._

_I love you too._

***

He knows this, he knows where he is—they’ve walked this path before, the two of them. Sweet coincidence, this is where he fell? Or his maker’s cruel sense of humour? He doesn’t stop to consider, instead pushes through the brush, every part of him tugging him forward to where they met, that magical, beautiful part of the river that tortured him for weeks on end. It was worth it, it was all worth it if he can find—if he can just find—if he can—if—

There he is, his love, his human, lying in the river like so many times they have laid before. The water swirls crimson around him, framing his too-pale skin in a way that should not be beautiful, and finally the angel finds his voice.

 _“Ezra!”_ he screams, guttural and hoarse, the sound of pure pain. He leaps into the river and pulls the human close, shaking him, grabbing at his wrists, holding the wounds shut—but it is too late, it’s far too late, he can see that.

“Sani,” gasps the dying man, and smiles. A hand caresses his face, dripping blood all over the both of them. “You came back—”

“I love you—” he says, “I’ll always come back—” but Ezra is gone, fading into nothing before his eyes, and he swears he hears his soul crack clean in two.

The dagger is lying on the river bank and crazed he staggers towards it, lifting it and plunging it into his heart without a second thought. It is not here, anyway. Ezra took it with him when he went—wherever he went—and it’s with the knowledge that he will follow that he sinks the dagger deeper, twisting, pain ripping him open once more.  
But he does not die.

He stares, incredulous, at the dagger sticking out of his chest for what seems like years. Ezra’s body bobs against his thigh. He pulls the dagger out and stabs himself again, again, over and over and over and over, sobbing hysterically, but no matter how many wounds he gives himself they knit closed almost instantly. He slits his throat and gasps for air for a few seconds before finding it again. He slices every artery he can find and barely feels faint.

Screaming, wild with fury and anguish, he plunges the dagger into his chest once more. He cracks his ribs open and pulls out his still-beating heart, cups it in his hands, cradles it. He was too late, he was too late, and he can never forgive himself—

“Yours,” he gasps, and places his heart on Ezra’s chest. “Mine, yours, forever.”

***

Death never does come for him.

There are stories told about him to this day—myths, passed down from generation to generation, the story of the lonely angel wandering the earth, unable to die, forever mourning his love. Sometimes, once in a blue moon, a human will spot him in the river, cupping his empty hands and holding them out in front of him as if he’s offering something to someone, magnificent wings turned rotten and hideous, but blink and he is gone.

 _Mine_ , he whispers to the wind, green eyes haunting him no matter where he goes, no matter how far he travels from that cursed river.

To covet is to sin—

and to sin is to fall—

and to fall is to covet—

_Mine._

_My fall will be for you_  
_My love will be in you_  
_You were the one to cut me_  
_So I’ll bleed forever_

**Author's Note:**

> oh look how on brand i'm writing gay angels again
> 
> just something i whipped up after about a year of not writing to prove that i can still do it. it's crap, i know, but it's something.
> 
> lyrics at the beginning and end are from ghost love score by nightwish
> 
> eta: also i'm back on vixx twt at [inyeonni](http://twitter.com/inyeonni)! working on getting some fic up and running soon c:


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